How bad it is on Texas’ textbook review board

These are some of the most notable nominees on the Texas textbook review board:

Walter Bradley was an engineer who coauthored a book, The Mystery of Life’s Origins, which essentially launched the “intelligent design” movement. He and Raymond Bohlin of Probe Ministries are both associated fellows of the Discovery Institute. Another engineer, Richard White, and David Zeiger who teaches in a private Christian school, and Ide Trotter, spokesman for the grossly-misnamed creationist group, ‘Texans for Better Science Education’ -all advocate teaching scientifically discredited “weaknesses” of evolution in Texas science classrooms.

In addition to these, we also have board member, Ken Mercer, who argues that morphology and biochemistry somehow represent two different discordant trees rather than one twin-nested hierarchy. Then there’s board chairman Barbara Cargill who was called out for trying to influence specific changes outside her charge or ethical boundaries.

I can hardly imagine a less appropriate panel to govern over the standards of science education.